A well-researched and accessible examination of Fountaingrove’s utopian society.
A history book focuses on a California utopian community from its 19th-century origins to the destruction of its remnants by wildfires in the 21st century.
Casey (The Double Life of Laurence Oliphant, 2015) and LeBaron (Santa Rosa, 1993) center their study of Fountaingrove on minibiographies of its three most famous members: Thomas Lake Harris, Laurence Oliphant, and Kanaye Nagasawa. Harris, Fountaingrove’s founder, was a product of the religious mania that swept New York state in the 1820s and ’30s. That wave created an array of new religions and philosophies that ranged from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith, to the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. While Harris’ ideas challenged traditional social conventions with notions of the duality of masculinity/femininity that existed in every human and contradictory views on sexuality and celibacy, he managed to convince hundreds of followers to leave their homes and join his promised second Garden of Eden, Fountaingrove, in Santa Rosa. Indeed, two of his most famous followers, Oliphant and Nagasawa, made transoceanic journeys to join him. Oliphant gave up a career as a British diplomat and Member of Parliament, and Nagasawa left a life as a samurai in Japan. Nagasawa’s tale is the book’s strongest contribution, as he was one of the first Japanese immigrants to land in the United States. His story and eventual leadership of Fountaingrove are an important chapter of early Japanese-American history. Though essentially a small community in Santa Rosa, Fountaingrove had an impact that extended from New York during the Second Great Awakening across the globe to England and Japan. Featuring black-and-white archival photographs, this rigorous volume should be of interest not just to Santa Rosa residents curious about Fountaingrove’s presence (and uniquely designed round barn that left its architectural stamp for nearly a century) in their city, but also readers intrigued by the new movements of the 19th century. While the authors occasionally overuse lengthy quotes from primary sources, the narrative remains engaging as it deftly explores the captivating figures who defined Fountaingrove.
A well-researched and accessible examination of Fountaingrove’s utopian society.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-17702-0
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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